Accepting oneself, a cognitive journey…

Underneath it all, at the core of my being, within my inner dialogue, in the very fibre of my being, I always new it. I was somehow different. Not different to everyone but different to the so called typical, different to what was considered to be desirable.

I can’t recall ever not having an internal dialogue about being different. Never in my life has there been a time where I wasn’t discussing with myself, working through internally, wondering out loud, looking up information or asking others, why it was I struggled to fit in, to make friends, to be acceptable to the world at large.

Throughout my childhood I endured significant trauma. Physical, sexual, emotional, verbal trauma were everyday experiences as I grew up. I don’t mention this as an attempt to garner sympathy or people to feel sorry for me. The very sad reality is that many people in this world experience similar and greater levels of traumatic experience than I did.

It is what it is.

Something that does seem to be true, however is that those with us who are marked out as different, in whatever form, are more likely to have experienced trauma. Who actually knows which predates which is one of those big questions of life. There is no doubt in my mind that I am different from the point of birth, but the question of whether that difference was increased and exacerbated by trauma, or more disturbingly was the trauma I endured more pronounced because of my being different.

The question itself is somewhat disturbing.

With all this in mind, I want to fast forward well into my adulthood. Living my life in a second marriage, parent of 3 children, struggling to maintain relationships, jobs, manage executive function and maintain a level of mental health that enabled me to function day to day.

By this time I had learned a lot about difference, I had embraced it to an extent. Two of my kids by now had been diagnosed autistic. Both my beautiful wonderful autistic girls present very differently to each other. Thanks to my former partner I had been able to learn much about autism as being definitively a state of difference not deficit.

Going through the diagnostic process with ones children opens the way, I think, for the parent, to engage their own cognitive journey about their own selves. To begin to genuine ask of themselves questions about the difference in themselves they have always known. Does this autism thing explain that difference in themselves. Well that was certainly the case in my situation.

It really was a cognitive journey. A journey of asking and assessing how one thinks, how one experience the world and relationships. One’s sensory experiences. So many things are suddenly up for analysis.

Personally that cognitive journey along a path of sometimes seeing autism as a good thing, sometimes as just a different thing, and sometimes as a negative thing.

It turns out that this journey began a little earlier than I thought it had. And honestly probably even earlier than I am truly aware of. My former partner was dropping hints for me pick up and investigate most likely I believe for longer than I was really aware of. I believe that at some level of sub consciousness I was thinking and considering these hints.

That’s why I think, that when I came across an old note I had made on Evernote where I directly asked myself the big question of maybe I am autistic, was far earlier than I remember really prosecuting that cognitive journey.

At some levels I was scared to take the journey in a deliberate way, and that too had levels. I recall the effort it took to verbalise the idea to my then parter that I think maybe, or do you think maybe, that I might be autistic too?

It took some effort to make that verbalisation, and then when it was out there, there was certainly a period of running from that too.

Personally my cognitive journey from first being aware of genuinely asking myself the questions to self-diagnosis and then formal diagnosis was a number of years, about 5 years of conscious journey and most likely a few more than that too.

Taking the journey is but one part. Accepting the outcome is another part completely. As I made my way through this journey and was able to answer things about myself, explain things about myself and my place in the world and the way I interacted int he world, I seemed on a trajectory of becoming more confident in the outcome. And so it was, with some level of certainty that I took myself off to a clinical psychologist for a formal diagnosis.

The outcome was as I believed it would be, though, the emotional questioning of myself and the thinking that maybe I was reading too much into thing and confirmation bias was at play and so forth were certainly present as I arrived at the psychologist to receive the results.

Generally at this point, I rightly believed I was autistic. Yet this didn’t prepare me for how I felt, and that I would struggle with accepting what this meant.

For a decade I had maintained a positive different not less attitude to autism and an attitude somewhat akin to the neurodiversity paradigm. In interacting with my kids, I wanted to understand and make their lives as good as they could be, and I wanted to do this without fixing or changing them.

But then suddenly I was diagnosed.

Suddenly I felt guilty.

I was angry at myself for what I had supposedly done to my children.

I was broken.

This was ridiculous. This was totally out of sync with what I had believed and how I had approached the reality of autism in my own kid, and in the kids I was privileged to teach in my short Primary School teaching career.

I was more depressed than normal. It made no sense to me that this was how I was, but it was how it was. I was somewhat angry at myself because of it.

It seemed I had to go on some level of a personal cognitive journey all over again. It was a journey that was punctuated by the idea that this is what you know and believe about autism, so why is it different now it applies officially to you.

I am thankful that this journey was relatively short, I think about 9 months. In this time I didn’t want to disclose my diagnosis, or when I did it was with some level of shame and embarrassment. The autistic pride I feel and try to convey was very far from present.

A chance meeting changed everything. At a conference in Brisbane, a short but instructive conversation with an eminent neuropsychologist changed everything. I was sharing with her my diagnosis, my feelings of shame and guilt. As I spoke and as she listened, suddenly the sheer ridiculousness of what I was saying seemed evident. Her response of saying to me Roe, listen to yourself, you know you’re talking shit. You’re just different, you and your kids are not less, you’re different and and wonderful. Embrace it.

In a moment, in a glimpse of time everything changed.

It was as though in that instant a paradigm shift occurred, internally my mindset shifted from guilt and shame to acceptance, celebration and pride.

The next day was the day I started my autistic focussed Facebook page and recommended blogging and writing.

Everything changed. And everything changed because of autistic pride.

Everything changed because of acceptance.

Everything changed because I could finally see and believe that autism really was:

DIFFERENT NOT LESS

Being misgendered, it happens, too often, and it hurts…

I get it, and I expect most gender divergent people do too. It’s a change, it’s different, people make mistakes, get it wrong and stumble. That’s all a given. But what’s not a given is continuing to make those same stuff ups, missteps mistakes and stumbles for now and into eternity.

In case you’re not clear I’m referring to misgendering and deadnaming. Two things that are often done, sometimes mistakenly and sometimes with deliberate obstinance. The thing is for those of us on the receiving end of it, it is really quite a difficult thing to manage. It hurts. A lot.

Of course, in my view, intent matters, and when you know, really know that the intent was not their it does seem to hurt a little less, but still it hurts. Sometimes the stumbling over it and recovery effort just amplifies the issue.

I get it people knew me as if I was another gender for 40 plus years, people knew me by another name, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. It doesn’t make me shrink inside any less, it doesn’t matter that the intent was good, it bloody hurts, a lot.

Adapting to change can be hard. Sure. Especially for those that know us well, have known us for a long time and are going through their very own journey of working out what all this actually means for them too.

There are plenty of people we trans* humans deal with that do this with negative intent, with an actual aim of hurting and othering us. Of deliberately causing us hurt and distress, and to openly question our right to exist. I’m not really talking about them here though. Their actions are simply bigotry and hate, and that’s not what I am trying to get at here.

I’m getting at kids, friends, family, relatives and so on. Sometimes when it happens, it’s suddenly all about how hard it is for them. And yes I get it. Yes it’s hard. But here’s a little thing, it’s not as fucking hard as being on the recieving end of it.

Yes, mistakes happen. This is absolutely unquestionable, it can be like those times when as a parent you go through the list of your own kids names before getting to the right one. But that’s not how the experience is on the receiving end. On the receiving end it’s like, well, it fucking hurts, it impacts on how I percieve myself how I am as I continue through the day.

There are many times this happens, many times, when I don’t show offence, I don’t make an issue it, I don’t say I am hurt. But know this, it hurts every single time.

Coming to the point of transitioning as an older person was a process of understanding and learning just how deeply I had repressed my own true self deeply behind a veneer of pretense that was living life as the gender assigned to me at my birth and strongly enforced in my family of origin. Every reminder of the years living that lie, repressing that truth is a reminder of pain, a reminder of a time in the past where an authentic lived experience was not there.

When a person fucks up and misgenderes me it is like a floodgate of painful experience re-experienced in an instant of time. It really hurts. It feels like having an act of violence inflicted upon you.

As a trans woman, coming out in their 40’s having children in the mix, it’s becomes a very complicated negotiation of how things are, what people will call you and so on and so forth. So when something seemingly small like the right pronouns are not used, it feels like a really big thing.

For me personally, I have three children, two adult and one primary aged, I have two former wives who are these childrens mothers. It is a complicated landscape to negotiate. To them I have always, until a year or so ago, been the father, the dad. Even though I never truly felt that way, and I feel I did a really shit job of that role, that’s what their experience is. All of them continue to call me dad.

I don’t particularly like this, and one of my former partners strongly encourages this, which kind of makes it hard. But at this point it is what it is.

The reality for me though is pain and hurt every time they say the word dad, it’s mixed of course with the deep love and affection I have for them, but it hurts, it’s like a hot knife stabbing into my heart. I know they don’t mean that to be the case but that’s what it is for me.

And it’s more than that too, there’s also the very real and regular situation of being outed in public spaces by that one word. Sometimes that very real pain and hurt, far too often, it places me in the situation of being unsure of my physical safety, it puts me in the place of having to choose whether it is safe to maintain my place in that space or not.

When I hear, but it’s hard. When I hear, but I still think of you as.., when I hear, I am doing my best, at one level sure, I get it. But on another level, if you care about me, if you care about the trans people in your life, you need to do better. You need to do better not just for you but for, well everything connected with you and that person.

Sure it’s hard, lots of things in life are hard, but we do them. Algebra is darn hard for some, so that’s not actually a reason for getting it wrong.

Getting pronouns right, no matter how hard, is the respectful and caring thing to do. Not misgendering a person is the respectful and right thing to do.

When it comes down to it, referring to someone in the manner in which they ask to be referred to is a part of treating another human person with dignity and respect.

I am quite convinced that at heart it is a matter of will, of choosing to do it because you respect, love and care for that person, for people in general. Sure it can be hard, you most likely will have mistakes and pitfalls, and when you do, it’s a matter of apologising, moving on and determining to do better.

Let’s do better people, all of us. Let’s do better at treating each other with the dignity and respect that we would want to be treated with. It’s as they say the outworking of the golden rule.

Mistakes happen, yes they hurt, but making them about you hurts even more.

Let’s all do better together.

Shaken not broken.

An ordinary work day turned into something very much not ordinary, well not ordinary in terms of living in my home town and going about day to day life.

Everything was just going along as normal, well as normal as anything is in this time of public debate and postal survey times is. Social media feeds are full of everything marriage equality. There are many signs of support, much celebration of votes being cast in the affirmative, and sadly a lot of homophobia, transphobia and hateful stuff too.

To say that the Australian LGBTQIA+ community are living through interesting times at the moment would be something of an understatement, the reality is, that it’s really tough living through this period. Yes, there is a lot of support for our community and I for one am incredibly thankful for that support, but it doesn’t change the fact that our very right to exist and live as full participants of society is being publicly debated every moment of every day in every stream of media one can access.

It’s in that context, that my ordinary start to the day was totally derailed yesterday as I made my way to work. All started pretty normal, my alarm went off, I beligerently snoozed it a couple of times until it was clear I really had to obey it’s beeping and make my way out of bed. The normal routine of showering, makeup application, dressing, and making my way to the local station ensued.

My ride on the train was as boring and uneventful as it is on most days. It was what happened at the end of this train trip that shook me to my core. I exited the train and entered the lift to carry my up to the exit level of the railway station. All going well, the lift was even waiting for me with no waiting required. All that was left was a short brisk walk from the station to the office and the day of work would commence. Or so I thought.

As I stood in the lift, against the wall, another woman entered the lift, she took a moment to look at me and proceeded to physically shove me further into the lift and into the other occupants. Needless to say I was somewhat shocked at this altercation, as I looked gathered myself and looked towards the woman I saw she was carrying her bible and some kind of study materials to assist her with reading it.

Now I’m a Christian myself and so in a sense nothing too out of the ordinary about a bible toting person, but it was the word she spoke to me with quiet insistent venom as our eyes met that shocked me to my core. “You’re a freak” we those words. Spoken at a level that would ensure I heard them but not loud enough for others to clearly make them out.

I rode the lift and exited it after everyone else, slowly, my brisk walk became more of an amble to the office, in the shock that I was in my mind was turning these events over and over again, actually asking if this had just really happened. Had I just been the victim of a transphobic attack.

So lost in this mind turning thought process as I mad my way into my office building I managed to fall up the stairs going from the ground level to the main foyer. over and over, around and around was the realistion that yes I had just been assaulted for no other reason than that of being my true self.

I’ve written before of how generally safe and accepting a community it is in which I live. I maintain that is the case, and yet the events of yesterday have shacken me to my core, made just that more real that not everyone is accepting and supportive as the majority of people I am lucky enough to spend the majority of my time with.

I am utterly convinced that if it had not been for the fact that we are enduring this horrible postal survey on the right of LGBTQIA+ people to be equal before the law that yesterday’s attack would not have happened.

Everyday in the media there is more evidence of increased anti LGBTQIA+ behaviour, assaults, destruction of property and so on. It’s as though those with antiquated and discriminatory views and ideas believe they have permission to do what they want and treat people however they like. In short that they are free to release their hate upon us.

We still have weeks to go in this damn postal survey and the ramping up of the hateful continues.

I spent my day yesterday in somewhat of a dazed and confused kind of state, not quite sure if I had entered some alternate reality. Did that really happen, did I somehow imagine that altercation.

What stands true and present in my mind though is the look of hatred and the venom like way the words “you’re a freak” were virtually spat or hissed at me.

It’s well over 24 hours since the event and I find myself making my way through my day, with even more hypervigilance than I typically would. And I don’t like it. I just want to make my way through my life being able to be the person I am, without fear that I will be assaulted for no other reason than my very existence is for some unfathomable reason anathema to aother.

We’re all humans sharing this planet, why can’t we just accept one another and get on with living our lives in peace and hopefully when it comes to the end of our life we have left a positive impact on the people we’ve interacted with.

Please, can’t we just accept one another. Maybe even support one another to be the best possible humans we can be. If we could work towards that, that’d be kind of grand I reckon.

It’s all just being autistic!

Since the time of Leo Kanner, the naming and codifying of what it is to be autistic has gone through many variations. We’ve had Kanner’s autism, Classic Autism. Autistic Disorder, Aspergers Syndrome, PDD-NOS, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Autism Spectrum Condition.

But they’re all naming the same thing, they’re all naming what it is to be autistic. You’ve likely heard the phrase, if you’ve met one autistic person then you’ve met one autistic person, it’s something of a cliche but it does communicate a basic truth, that every autistic person is a unique and individual person. We’re all different.

Some have said we’re possibly more different to each other than non-autistic people are from each other. There could be some truth, and yet, there is something we share that is ties us together as a tribe. An autistic tribe.

As autistic people we share many differences to each other, sensory differences, social and communication differences. Some of us have no issue with eye contact and yet for some of us, actually giving eye contact is actually painful, intensely so.

Often the most noted difference is the difference in our speech and language skills. Indeed, it was in DSMIV meant to be the difference between an autistic disorder diagnosis and an Aspergers Syndrome diagnosis. But unfortunately it didn’t pan out that way. Many autistic people that did have speech and language difficulties were given a diagnoses of Aspergers, even though, according to the criteria it should have been autistic disorder.

An unfortunate repercussion of all this different naming is the building of division in some sections of the autistic tribe. A misconception that an Aspergers diagnosis was somehow better, that it was some kind of mild version of autism has grown up around it. And the reality is that it’s absolute bullshit. Aspergers is not different it is autism.

We’re all autistic, regardless of the nomenclature and none of us are better or worse than any other autistic. We all have our skills and strengths and we all have our challenges and difficulties. They aren’t ranked, they’re just different.

It’s unfortunate that the non autistic world we inhabit likes to codify these things as better or worse than each other. This world has created fictional names for an autism diagnosis like High Functioning, Low Functioning, Mild, Severe are a few examples. The thing is though they are not real, they are fictions created by the non-autistic world to make an attempt to codify us, to level us, to rank us against each other.

And it’s all bullshit.

We as a tribe have faced enough rubbish research looking for causes and cures. We’ve had enough trauma being subjected to horrible therapies designed to make us indistinguishable from a non-autistic person. We’ve had to deal with more than our share of rubbish diets and fads, had our existence equated with the very rare condition of a vaccine injury.

It’s time we stand together and call bullshit to it all.

We aren’t a mistake, we don’t need to be made indistinguishable, we don’t need to be intervened on. We need to stand together and call out all the bullshit and stand strong together as an autistic tribe declaring strongly our call to action, that we are Different Not Less and that there should be Nothing About Us Without Us.

Whatever we use as our identity preference is a personal thing, one that we each make within ourselves, and that is our right to do and we should never be told we can’t do such a thing. Personally the best and most correct is Autistic. I have friends who love the term Aspie, I don’t like it myself but it is not my right to tell them they can’t use them.

I absolutely believe Identity first language about ourselves is the best way to go, but I also believe every single autistic has the right to choose the way they identify in regard to their autism.

Having said this, what is key is that we don’t let false distinctions of label divide us that we stand united and claim our human rights, our rights to exist as we are, to be who we are and not have our existence called into question.

We are autistic, we are human, we are Different Not Less!!

Autistic tribe, I call on us all together to declare it and to insist on Nothing About Us Without Us. No more Bleach, No more fad diets, No more antivax bullshit, no more conversion therapy and dog training.

What we want is support. Support to be the best individual autistic person we can be, to get the very best out of life we can as we carve out our lives as our true autistic selves.

Let’s proclaim our call tribe, Nothing About Us Without Us. We are Different Not Less.

When fear comes to town

Seemingly fear is an unavoidable thing. It comes to town when it will and it can really throw you for an emotional spin when it does. Fear can so often seem an abstract concept, portrayed in suspense movies, horror movies, good novels and regularly on our TV screens.

We see fear pedalled by politicians to manipulate, or at least attempt to, the people they hope to have vote for them. For some fear though, is a daily reality. It’s a reality as you make your way through your day as a person that is considered other by the so called general population of the societies in which we inhabit.

Most of the time I feel largely thankful to be living in Melbourne a city that overall is tolerant, accepting and protective of difference. Most of the time, I can walk my experience of daily living with fear kept at bay. I am genuinely thankful for that. I don’t know that I would have had the courage to come out as trans and walk this journey if I didn’t live where I live. It is a positive place, in comparison to others, to be LGBTQIA+.

Of course though it’s not perfect and vigilance is incredibly important to keep oneself as safe as possible. Because bigotry and hate are always present somewhere, even if only in pockets, and the stock in trade of both of those paradigms is the peddling of fear.

Very much in Australia at this time, this vigilance is imperative. I wake up each day and find that the so called civil debate about Marriage Equality is far from civil. I hear current and former politicians debating whether I should be afforded the same rights as they themselves enjoy. I hear so called civil debate calling in to question the legitimacy of my existence as a transgender person. It’s an extremely difficult time to navigate.

The vigilance that one has is increased. Former leaders of mainstream political parties use my very existence as an example of how marriage equality will somehow mark the end of life as we know it. If it wasn’t actually so serious it would have an element of dark humour.

Today I sat in a suburban shopping centre having a quiet coffee. Thinking of not much other than the list of things I needed to get at the supermarket when I finished my coffee. Of course my hyper vigilance was also turned on, because it just has to be, it can’t really ever be turned off. Because the ugly fear element of the world might just come crashing in. Or it might even just look like it is going to come crashing in.

As it happened, it didn’t come crashing in, but as I sat with my coffee, the potential of it to come crashing in, came crashing in. Two young men came and sat at the table next to me. The place was largely empty so the fact that they chose that table in itself raised warning bells for me. These two young men, most likely innocent enough, but in my imaginations and fear I read them, due to the tone of their voices, the way they spoke with each other, as, I guess, kind of Alpha Male types.

I was suddenly thrust into what seemed to me legitimate and real fear. So many thoughts came crashing in.

Am I safe
Why did they choose to sit next to me, must be to intimidate me
Will they follow me.
Are they whispering about me
The laughs must be about me

Just a few little examples of the thoughts that can come crashing in, which as a member of a minority that doesn’t have equal rights, one seems to have no defence against. They do just come crashing in, because, yes, the fear comes crashing in.

I suspect that as an autistic person that I perseverate on this more than a non autistic person would, but in the climate of public debate that is occurring in the public realm of my home country and community that is currently in process, my bubble of safe Melbourne doesn’t feel quite so much a safe little bubble at the moment.

When your legitimate existence and your human rights are the daily stock in trade of the public debate, then fear comes crashing in.

Fear that the public bigotry and hate will give tacit permission for a physical expression of that fear and hate. And yes we have in fact seen this in vandalising of houses flying the Rainbow flag and Yes voters for marriage equality physically beaten up.

Yes at this time in my normally safe feeling little bubble, unfortunately fear has come crashing in.

We must vote yes and defeat this fear and hate and work to equality for all. That all people, regardless of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity whatever are equal before the law and have the same rights and protections before the law as every other human in the society does.

Yes it’s a vote for Marriage equality, absolutely but it’s also very much a vote against hate, bigotry, discrimination and a vote for a better safer society to be a part of.

Vote yes for a better future for all.

Time to stop and listen, your legacy depends on it.

The autism communities owe much grattitude to Professor Tony Attwood. He has provided much insight, wisdom, acceptance and destigmatising of autistic people. His book The Complete Guide to Aspergers Syndrome graces the shelves of many a bookshelf amongst families with autistic members.

Tony is rightly credited with seeing autistic strengths and making moves to depathologise autism. One could say he was, at least in part, early to the neurodiversity movement, in a sense.

Personally I have heard him speak on a number of occasions, I have enjoyed his lighthearted and friendly approach to communicating about autism. I recall with delight the first time I came across Tony, he was giving a talk to at The National Press club in Canberra, he spoke of things that were very relatable to myself, perhaps it was in fact this first experience of Tony that were really the seeds of discovering my own neurodivergence.

As time has gone on, as I listened to Tony again and again, things seemed to not sit quite so right. I felt as if something was a bit a miss. At first I put it down just to me being over sensitive or something, but it became apparent that it was in fact not just me, a growing number of autistic people were feeling the same way.

That was that Tony was getting laughs from his audiences by regailing them with jokes and anecdotes about things we do and say that are for some reason seen to be funny at our expense by the non autistic audience. The thing is of course, that his audiences were never really all non autistic at all. We autistics have always been a part of those audiences and Tony was aware of this.

The line that Tony crossed for me was a combintion of hearing him speak as part of an audience at an Aspergers Victoria event where a large proportion of the attendees were adult autistic humans. Tony regailed us with joke after joke after joke at our expense. It was at this event that I really started to feel something was not quite right.

Over time I realised I wasn’t alone, and in fact Tony had been approached at an event and called out for this behaviour. Tony responded by claiming we autistics just misread the situation and lacked the social and communicational understandings to grasp it, this person attempted to dialogue further about this and received responses that showed Tony was unwilling to listen to the voices of those he purported to be helping.

The program that aired on Austrlia’s ABC last night was somewhat entertaining, it delivered pathos of a family living through difficult times. It showed some honesty from Tony acknowledging how he missed the autism in his own child.

Again, to be clear Tony has given much to the autism community, a gift of incalculable proportions. However, if Tony continues on his current trajectory he will diminish that gift and risks becoming a pariah.

Tony’s use of language was terrible, consistently referring to functioning labels, outmoded diagnostic labels and consistent use of person first language. This was stark and cut across the fact that, at the same time he was trying to present a depathologised picture of autism. All whilst using the pathologised language.

Tony also failed to present an accurate picture of what neurotypcial actually means and equated it with non-autistic. This kind of language erases the many variations of neurodivergence that abound in our world.

At one point, he spoke of the autism spectrum as if it was a linear line, a line at which he placed a particular type at one end, intimating a superiority at that end. The spectrum is not a line at all, I am not sure the best way to characterise it but It certainly isn’t a line, and an autistic person occupies different points on that spectrum at different times, sometimes from moment to moment, but certainly from day to day and week to week and so on.

Tony, I for one have benefited greatly from the knowledge and wisdom you have given to the autism world, but, please, Tony, for your sake, for my sake, for your son Will’s sake, please it’s time to listen to us. You are not our translator, you may think you speak our language but you actually don’t. Yes you know a lot about our language, but you don’t speak it, and you can’t really translate it. Your response to us when we have critiqued your use of jokes about us is a prime example.

Tony, please, stop, take a step back, listen to us, learn from us, stop speaking for us and just listen for a while. Once you’ve done that, I ask, Tony, that you shift your focus to speaking in a way that amplifies our voices, I believe Tony, if you are prepared to do this you will add to your legacy and stop detracting from it.

Oh and yes, please, Tony, stop saying ridiculous things, like, what if Aspergers is the next step in evolution, things like that are just ridiculous.

But yes, please, Tony, listen to us.

The Australian Story episode can be found here

I used to be a bigot but I listened and I learned…

Before I came out trans and lesbian, for periods of my life at different times, I held some pretty horrible view on some issues, in particular in regard to sexual orientation. I think, a big part of this was a part of the denial and repression that I was engaged in in regard to my own true self.

I was born into a conservative Christian family, in fact my mother was a missionary kid born on the mission field. My Grandfather eventually became a local church minister. He and my Grandmother were wonderful people. But one can’t go past the fact that the views they held about human sexuality were archaic and in terms of anything other than good old heteronormativity can only be accurately described as bigoted.

For me I inherited these views, passed on not just by them but by the wider family and life growing up in a middle class Christian church community that was conservative and very much on about saving the poor lost souls from eternal damnation.

I’ve always been somewhat reflective, and always had some difficulty with these views at heart, mostly, I believe, because they were unjust and discriminatory. On the surface I acted like the good AMAB straight white middle class Christian person, made horrible and horrendous jokes about non heterosexual people. All of this I am much ashamed of. It was what I was taught, and yet, even then, I knew underneath at all that it was just plain wrong, bigoted and basically evil.

Oh how I wished I had had the bravery and strength to listen to my inner voice so many years earlier.

When I was around 20 my best friend came out to me as Gay. This shocked me, I had never imagined he was, but I was presented with an example of what underneath I believed to be true, that people were people and deserving of respect dignity and equality. But at the same time presented with someone that according to what I had been taught was living a life that was wrong, maybe even evil. This was my best friend, and whilst I can’t claim I was always the best ally, I did for the most part honour his friendship and stand with him through life. We’re still good friends 27 years later so I guess I managed it to some degree.

For a majority of my adult life, I have been wrestling with this issue, I have at times been sucked into the religious argument and fallen for the garbage that poses as actual academic interogation of the Christian texts. I have had periods on social media where I spread things that were hurtful to friends.

I am deeply ashamed.

I can see that some of these actions, much of them, were a part of my own deep denial and repression of my own true identity.

One day a few years ago I was taken to task and rightly called out on some comments I made, which were, I can’t escape it, bigoted. It was very difficult for me, but also it was instructive. It cost me some connections and friendships, and that hurt, was confusing and difficult. A number of people simply wrote me off, but I am thankful, so utterly thankful, for the time taken to help me understand and to listen not only to them, but to my own inner voice that had been trying to get through to me for so long, that these ideas were at odds with my belief and heart for justice and equality and fairness.

It was difficult, but, in listening I was able to change my mind about things, because I was enlightened and able to learn some things, because someone was patient enough to dialougue with me through the difficulties and find the other side.

I am convinced this was the moment that somehow my inner self, my true self felt safe to begin that long process of coming out and asserting itself and that I was able to hear that voice, listen to it, think on it, explore it and journey with it. Because of it I have come to a place where I am a much happier and authentic person than I was.

It is with a sense of shame that I admit, yes, I used to be a bigot. But I am testament that once a bigot always a bigot does not need to be the truth.

I am testament that it can and is worth having the dialogue, journeying with people and that people can change their mind when they see truth.

I used to be a bigot, and now I am not. I am not because I listened.

I am ashamed to have to write this piece but for sometime now it has felt like it has been my ‘elephant in the room’ and I must face up to it.

People can change for the better. I believe I am evidence and testament to it. Please don’t hate me for my history, but accept me with my flaws and know I am doing my best to live a life that seeks justice and kindness.

We’re all someone’s kids…

When I was a teenager a song in Australia became a hit, it was a calling out for action on the environment and conservation and sustainability.

Have a listen I think it’s message is still really valid and given how much inaction this country still has when it comes to the environment, but I think, and I hope it’s not appropriating something wrongly, but I think it’s message is really really potent in terms of current events in Australia.

Our country is in a turmoil over the question of the right to LGBTIQIA+ people to have the same rights before the law as heterosexuals do. Yes the main question is about marriage, because marriage is an institution of the state which also acts as a vehicle for the conveying of rights. Rights related to funeral rights for same sex partners, superannuation, wills and what not.

Actually really important things, things that come up at times that are emotionally charged. Just imagine, for a minute if you will, that your child, lost their partner, and were unable to be named as partner on the death certificate. It’s unjust, it’s inequatable, it’s unfair.

There is a line in this song, a line that says ‘we’re all someone’s daughter, we’re all someones son’, simply we’re all someone’s child, the implication that someone loves us cares for us etc. Of course life is not always happy families but the idea is effectively conveyed. Now this song was talking about the environment and that if we continue to sit on our hands and do nothing it is like looking down the barrel of a gun. In other words, if we don’t act we’re screwed.

Well you know what, we rainbow peeps are also all someones child, and we’re also many of us someone’s parent. And if we continue to do nothing about the inequality perpetrated on us by the institution of marriage as currently stands in this country we will be looking down the barrel of a gun, shit, we already are. Just look at the mental health outcomes and issues for LGBTQIA+ people, especially young people.

In order to achieve equality we’ve had to go to war in a sense. To highlight the bigotry, and hate that is levelled at us for simply existing. Calling out the use of religious arguments to stop a secular act of government being amended to ensure equality for all Australian people.

It’s a war we shouldn’t have had to have, our government should have dealt with this, and dealt with it a long time ago, but instead they have effectively fiddled while Rome burned, well while country after country have done the right thing and enshrined marriage equality in law. Funnily enough there has been no slippery slop into anything let alone the ridiculous claims made like legalising beastiality and the marrying of public monuments.

This war is a war, but a war we don’t want, I can’t see anyone wanting to be bombarded by hate and bigotry regularly as they scroll their newsfeed, watch the TV news or listen to their radios. But fight it we must, we must focus on the key issue, equality. We must not allow our fellow LGBTQIA+ tribe members to be singled out by the bigotry of those against us, we must call out the bullshit and lies for what they are, but we must do so without dehumanising the people that spout that bullshit. We must not fight hatred and bigotry by simply slinging back hatred and abuse.

I am convinced we will win this war. Either in this ridiculous survey exercise or sometime after, we will win. The opponents are on the wrong side of history and a victory is only a matter of when.

What we must not do is let this exercise fracture our country. We know there is solidarity for this from years of opinion polls, from data from The ABC’s Vote Compass. The winning is inevitable, the question is where will we be when the war is over.

We must work for that place to be a stronger more united country where we all stand equal and able to be our true whole selves and stand proudly in that and claim our place in this country as full and equal members.

When the war is over where will we be?

Of course I don’t speak for your child it’s the very last thing I would want to claim to do.

As an autistic adult, I can offer some insight into what it’s like to be autistic. Doing so is not a claim to know everything about autism, it’s not a claim that I know everything about your child, that I know them better than you do, or that I speak for them. To make such a claim, would be absolutely ridiculous.

Equally ridiculous is the claim by many self-styled autism parents that they are their children’s voice. Generally claims such as these are made on the basis that their child is non-speaking, or as it is often labelled non-verbal.

Let me explain a bit further. Every human has a voice of their own, it may be expressed through speaking, it may be expressed through assistive and augmentative communication devices, iPad apps, art and so many other options. The list is effectively endless.

I know a little about parenting, of course I am an expert only in terms of the parental relationship I have with my three daughters. I am not their voice, I never was, never will be, they have their own voice. Oh and yes, there were speech and language delay involved in my childrens development. So I know a thing or two about listening for their voice even when it wasn’t spoken words.

Parents of course know their kids very well. Especially in the formative years of their growing development. We love them, we hurt when they hurt, we celebrate when they celebrate, we feel for them intensely when they are unwell. It’s part of the parenting role, it is what it is. Again though, what we are not is their voice.

What we are though, is their advocate, and our job, especially if our kids have extra a development deemed to be not typical, is to be the best darn advocate we can for them. That does not mean appropriate our voice as their voice. It means, I believe, we have this task to find their voice, this can be difficult and fraught when our kids are non speaking, but nevertheless that is the task we have.

Once we find that voice, we may realise it’s communicating in a different way, it has its own unique language, and we have to learn to hear and understand it. Then our role as parent advocates is to stand with our kids and make sure that voice, their voice, is heard, sometimes we will have to shush people, we will have to prod and poke to ensure our children’s voice is being heard by others.

We have to amplify it, repeat it, shout it from the rooftops, repeat it to the educational, medical and other helping communities, but amplify it we must.

That’s our job, to help our kids find and then amplify and support our children as they express their voice in whatever form that takes.

Of course there will be times when we need to speak on their behalf, the key, the trick, the absolute most important thing is to not let our voice overide and sound out the voice of our kids that sometimes is so hard fought to be found.

As an autisitc adult, for much of my life, especially the growing up years, I was not abe to be an autonomous human person. My autonomy was taken from me and compliance with demand from parents, schools, church, pretty much everything was required. I was unable to be authentic because my authentic was seen as atypical, and atypical was deemed to be negative.

What I, as an autistic self-advocate do do when I speak out regarding different therapies and what not, is to speak for the autonomy of person of essentially all human persons, but especially in terms of my autistic tribe. Too many of my tribe have suffered great trauma simply because they too are atypical. I know this to be true of other adult autistics also, because I have spoken with many, I am friends with many, and so I know on this issue many of us stand united. But in the end I speak on my own behalf, from my own experience of what it is to be autistic.

When I speak out against a therapy, because I know it to be of concern, through personal experience, the experiences of others, and at times academic research, this never means I am advocating for no therapy ever to be done. That too would be a ridiculous assertion to make, though it is one that is often levelled at autistic advocates.

I am an autistic self advocate and I speak first and foremost from my own experience of being autistic and from being a parent to autistic and non autistic kids. If it feels like I am speaking on behalf of your child, please understand I would never seek to do that. But what I will do is encourage the finding of your child’s voice, I will encourage and plead that it is that voice you amplify rather than your voice.

My voice is my voice, it can be nothing other than this. It can though be a conduit for another, and that, is our job as parents, especially of atypical kids, to allow our voices to be conduits and amplifiers of our children voice, in whatever form that takes.

Amplify the autistic voice, not for the sake of amplification, but for the sake of the best possible health, well being, lifelong positive outcomes. Amplify the autistic voice so that the future of our tribe is more positve than the past has been.

Amplify the autistic voice.

Still the same person but… only better…

Around a year ago I accepted the reality that I was indeed trans. It was the end and it was the beginning. It was the end of denial, it was the end of pretending to be something I wasn’t, it was the end of so many little things, some expected some not expected and some that blindsided and nearly did me in.

I am still the same person, though in my view, only better. I mean how can one not be better than they were when they are living a life that is in line with who they are; for the first time ever. And so it was the beginning of so many things, the beginning of a new kind of hyper vigilance — as a trauma survivor hypervigilence has been with me for much of my life, the beginning of embarrassing moments for people when they see or hear your kids refer to you as Dad, or accidentally misgender you, the beginning of a new life in a sense but really a forking in the road of the same life a fork that leads to a new authenticity. One that you’ve never known before.

New discoveries of self, discoveries of how wonderful one can feel as they put on a new frock, discovering or was it just admitting to pretending to like beer for ones whole adult life when in reality you find it utterly disgusting. So many new things, so many continuing things.

The same person, but better. Still the parent, those children are still my children that doesn’t change, and of course, I will never cease to be that person who is the parent to those children. Sure, I look somewhat different, I act different, I sure as hell dress different and yet the fact remains I remain that same person, just better, or true, more me than I’ve ever been able to be.

To describe this year as a roller coaster ride can only be an understatement of mammoth proportions. The one constant has in effect been changes and transitions. Not just in terms of claiming my true gender and learning how that fits on me as a person, but in so many ways. From being a part of a marriage relationship to separated, to seeing my children every day to seeing them just some days, to waking up to the sounds and smiles each day of those children to missing that dreadfully. From being seemingly unemployable to holding down a full time professional position in a corporate entity. From angry at the world person to calm happy embracing all life has to offer with as much enthusiasm as possible.

So many changes. So many of them terribly difficult and yet, so many of them terribly wonderful. The pain of loss tempered with the joy of being able to embrace myself as I never had been in the past. It seems like a contradiction an impossibility, but, I guess, it just is what it is.

Transitioning for me was something I couldn’t not do. It was like opening pandoras box and it couldn’t be shut. I couldn’t unknow what I had finally known with a certainty and self knowledge that I had never experienced so clearly before. Ever. In some respects, I was in a rush, but, it was a rush to get started, not a rush to have everything done and dusted. It wasn’t as if I had some idea that I could flick a switch and all was complete. But I was, I admit in a rush to get started. I was in a hurry to start what I knew was going to be a long journey. A journey that I am far from completing, and yet, I feel I am well on the way.

Last Saturday I stood before a sizeable group of people and shared some of my story. Some of how I got to where I am. As I prepared to make that presentation, I was struck that the key, the thing that made such a difference was authenticity. Whether it came to my being autistic, or being trans, or what I bring to the table in any situation, if that thing that I bring, that you bring, that you allow others to bring is authenticity then we are all the better for it.

Transition is a big part of why and how I am a happier, healthier, more resilient, self-aware, productive, lighter, or in short better person than I was, but it’s almost as though transition for all it entails has been the lit path to the true key and that’s authenticity. It is in a sense a what comes first dilemna, like the chicken or the egg. The authenticity has depended on transition to be truly authentic, and at the same time it was only in accepting and stepping into my authentic true self that authenticity could be discovered.

So as I sit here typing words as a 47 year old autistic trans woman it’s almost impossible to wonder and think how things could have been different, how if only I had discovered my true self, or more correctly been allowed to be my true self rather than repressing it as a child what might have been. And that’s all well and good, but it’s not reality. The reality is the reality I live, not the reality I wished for. It’s in accepting that little nugget of truth that I am enabled to actually be authentic, to be the better be I believe I am now than I was a year ago, and the better me I believe I will be in another year ago.

That wished for, dreamed of, imagined reality is anything but reality. In a sense it’s better that way. I can’t imagine the loss of never having been able to be a parent to my three beautiful daughters, the imagination of a reality where those three wonderful humans never came to be, that is in itself perhaps the most dreadful nightmare of a reality that could ever be imagined.

What is, is what is, in order to be the better me, to keep being the better me, I must continue to accept what is, journey within that reality, discover myself in that reality and live that reality as the most me that me can be.

There is a key to life, and I believe that key is authenticity, or in other words simply being the truest me that I can be.

Embrace authenticity and be the better version of you.